My initial attempt to review the Marvel Unlimited app turned into a rant about the merits of digital comics versus real comics. At the time, the Marvel Unlimited App was poorly designed and extremely buggy. But one year later, I can honestly say that Marvel Unlimited has become one of my favourite and most used apps. And after a recent and major update to the app, I think it’s finally time to do a proper review.

The App:
Marvel Unlimited is an annual subscription-based service that gives you access to roughly 13,000 digital comics that can be read on your smartphone, computer or tablet. It costs $69.99 (R700) a year which could be an incredible deal depending on how many comics you are going to read. For example, digital comics cost between $2 and $4. In the past year, I’ve read about 200 digital comics on the app, which means that I’ve essentially consumed at least $200 worth of comics. So if you like to geek-out hard, this could be the app for you.

When the app first came out, the comic book reading experience was quite clunky, very buggy and would often crash. Thankfully, this has been fixed in the recent update and the reading experience is on par with other comic book apps like ComixOlogy. Another feature that started working after the recent update is offline reading, where you can save up to 12 issues onto your device. This is incredibly handy if you have a Wi-Fi only device or are about to get stuck on a plane…

The Content:
The sheer variety of comics available on the Marvel Unlimited app is still amazing, astonishing, incredible, fantastic and spectacular…It’s still pretty awesome having access to everything from classics from the Golden Age of comics to the latest issues of Marvel Now. No matter what type of Marvel comics you’re into, the app will keep you pretty well covered.

The only downside is that Marvel only loads a comic onto the app 6 months after it has been published. This is not a train smash, but if you like your comics fresh off the press, you will need to make another plan.

Despite this, I cannot overemphasise how many great titles are on the app. There are plenty of great Marvel Now titles including Uncanny Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis’ excellent run on All-New X-Men, Thor: God of Thunder (the most Sandman-like comic since Sandman) and Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye which is my favourite Marvel series ever. It has an entire issue told from the perspective of a one-eyed dog and is just generally fucking incredible. There is also the complete Age of Ultron series which will form the basis for the next Avengers movie (just saying).

There is no shortage of great comics on the Marvel Unlimited app. If you like reading comics, want to catch up with what’s happening in the Marvel Universe or just explore it; download this app and just give Marvel your money. I know it’s quite rare to write a review after spending almost a year using a product or service…but I have loved this service and look forward to spending another year in the Marvel Universe.